Unity and GNOME Shell Pros/Cons
 

I'm thinking about the near future with Unity and GNOME Shell. I've tried both a little and wondered what I'm missing; they seem pretty much the same on the outside!

I'm assuming it's similar to GNOME and XFCE; they look quite similar, with XFCE aiming to be lighter-weight, but what's the difference between these two new 3D environments? Why did Ubuntu fork the GNOME environment when it barely differs from what GNOME are providing?

AFAIK, Unity is a Gnome shell and was originally intended for tablets and netbooks. Here I can see its benefits over the traditional Gnome desktop. Other than that, I don't think many existing linux users will switch to it. Even in the future realeases of Ubuntu there'll be an option to open a traditional Gnome shell. With its flashy/eye-candy look Unity is likely to attract new users to linux.

Unity is developed by Ubuntu, not GNOME. Also GNOME Shell is still in alpha; "traditional"?

Did I say otherwise?

Yes, it is.

Ok, not the best choice of words.